Some months ago, pastor-blogger Trevin Wax posted an article called “Urban Legends: The Preacher’s Edition.” There he lists several “urban legends” that he’s heard floating around lately in sermons. Like Internet rumors that people forward on ad infinitum, these preaching illustrations don’t have much grounding in fact. One potential fallacy on his list caught my [...]
On a bus in Jerusalem, I encountered the passionate Middle Eastern attitude that colored Jesus’ parables and his attitude toward prayer.
An updated version of the New International Version (NIV) has come out this year, and of course, controversy abounds. Few issues stir up evangelical Christian passions more than Bible translation. Knowing the reverence that Jews have for the Text, I was curious what opinion they’d have. What translation do they consider authoritative? What kind of [...]
If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it from you. It is better for you to enter life with one eye, than to have two eyes and be cast into the fiery hell. Matthew 18:9 Some of the sayings of Jesus are so strong that we wonder if Jesus really [...]
(Excerpt from Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus, Zondervan, 2012) In 1945, Rabbi Eliezer Silver headed up the search for thousands of displaced Jewish children across Europe. They had been hidden from the clutches of the Nazis on farms, convents, and monasteries, and now he sought to return them to their families if at [...]
[An excerpt from the first chapter of Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus (Zondervan, 2012)] What does it mean that Jesus lived as a Jewish rabbi who called and trained disciples? And how does learning about his teachings in their original context enable us to better live out our calling? Jesus’ first followers responded [...]
No one is innocent of harming others through gossip. Is there any way to improve what comes out of our mouths?
Why does the Bible begin with the second letter of the alphabet, not the first? To show that not all knowledge is accessible to man, but some is reserved for God himself.
We modern Christians struggle more to understand our Bibles than many people throughout history.
The Jewish prayers of Jesus and Paul were very different than how we do today. Discovering how they “blessed” the Lord can enrich our faith.